Your Body
You and your partner made the decision to bring life into the world (or you didn’t but you are just super fertile). That is beautiful, honorable, and brave. You raised your baby inside you for 9 months (sometimes less sometimes more), knowing that your body would grow to accommodate the baby growing inside.
You were patient in this process as you respected the needs of the human growing inside you.
You had your beautiful baby and found that you had never really felt a love and bond this strong ever before.
You brought the beautiful baby home and started taking cute pictures of the first few days.
Then you turned on yourself.
Your incredible, resilient, human body. That vessel that allowed you to fall pregnant, carry and grow a healthy human being for 9 months, then deliver said baby. The body that preserved your life in the process. The one that handled the stress, drugs, tearing, operations and trauma.Your body just did the most incredible thing. But now you hate it. You look at yourself in the mirror and think negative thoughts, willing that it ‘go back to normal’ ASAP. Your body has worked SO HARD for you and your baby! It took 9 months to create an adequate temporary home so that your child could grow to a healthy size inside you, but you expect it to snap back into shape as soon as the baby is 2 weeks old. “Can’t wait to lose this baby weight”, you tweet, Facebook, Instagram, everything.
Now, I know (from experience) how hard it is to not be at your regular weight. It’s uncomfortable, you feel gross and always feel discouraged. But this isn’t just a regular weight gain due to bad food choices and a sedentary lifestyle. I shouldn’t have to say this but i feel like the pressure from society (media) forces me to: You know why celebrities do it? It’s their job. You know how they do it? They have chefs, dieticians, trainers, cleaners and nannies (and their plastic surgeon on call). Most of us live in the real world where if you have none of these things, it’s not going to happen overnight for you. It may take weeks, months or even years and in many cases your body will never be the same again (by the way, it’s not designed to be). But you know what? Who gives a shit? You have a child now and a body that allows you to take care of it.
The solution to losing baby weight is simple but requires effort. It’s up to you to get sleep when possible, eat nutritious foods without over eating, and exercise a few times a week. If you do these things, your body WILL shed the excess to what is a healthy weight for you and you might start to feel yourself sooner rather than later. However, If you feed it crap and get no sleep or exercise, you’ll feel pregnant for a lot longer than 9 months. Self loathing will not help you stay positive, make right food choices or get out for a long walk. It will keep you in a discouraged place though, where it will rob you of some of the joy of those ‘early days’ of motherhood – a time when you should be celebrating your body for it’s amazing capacity to create new life, not punishing it for what it looks like after the fact.
Fact: Everyone who loves you and cares about you couldn’t care less about you not being at your pre baby weight. So get on that health train, sleep when you can and let your baby have a mother that appreciates, respects and loves her body.
Have you or someone you know just had a baby and need help with nutrition and excercise advice? Contact me today for a free consultation.